303 thoughts on “Screaming, Pew Climbing, and Shenanigans”

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Surely some here have better things of greater import than discussing anything with Mr. Baker. Mr. Baker knows he is right about everything and every person, and will tell you so, thus any point of reasoning is absent. He is, too, most adept at the Scripture clobber.

Respect for the opinions of others is important. That is a main ingredient of a civil society.

Im amazed how every IFB church Ive ever been to records every service both audio and video. Ive been in a church with less than 10 people and they still had a guy running the camera and another in the sound booth. This video has several angles so someone had to edit and produce it.

Believe it or not they have boxed sets you can purchase (either audio or video) that they put out on “Product Tables” wherever they go.

And Conventions such as the Sword of the Lord have an entire hall set up so they can put their product out for the koolaid drinkers to buy by the armload.

Last time I went to the SOTL there was several tables of CD’s and DVD’s of every fundamental Preacher in history there for you to purchase. One dude asked me, “you want to buy some good preachin’?” I bit my tongue and didn’t answer him as I wanted to… 🙄

People never see it in theirselves. We all have the first response that what we are doing is right, just and nobel. These people (and I know from first hand personal experience) believe they are God’s chosen vessels. They only have the blessing and anointing of God to preach the truth so by whatever means available they get their message out to the world.

It is a very spiritually inbred mindset. And they begin to believe it to the point of cult like adherence. They claim to be getting out the word, good preaching and such but in the end it becomes a marketing tool. At some point these characters preach their magnum opus and it becomes their signature sermon and they preach it everywhere they go.
Tape
sales(now CD, Mp3 and DVD) were a boon to the evangelist and the rising IFB star… or even the IFB wannabe star. They began to record everything never knowing when they might hit a homerun with a sermon that they can then use and reuse wherever they go. And it if it, or they, get popular enough then they can sell it and make money.

His disdain for those organizations? I think he said there is nothing wrong with them but they should be giving out the gospel. Then he gives Scripture backing his point up. I don’t understand the reason this was posted.

AUGH.
I just . . . urgh. Like, he goes on about only giving Christmas presents if you’re giving the gospel, too. Does he think that somewhere in that “when did we see you thirsty and give you a drink, or in prison and visit you. . . when you did it for the least of these, you did it for Me” story, they were giving out all of these gifts with tracts? Jesus didn’t say “a glass of water and a sermon”, he said A GLASS OF WATER.
AUGH.

So you are suggesting that the Gospel isn’t given out? It says a glass of water in my name. And the point of Christ’s lesson about the least of these was to show others that they should not always looks to see what they can receive back. I really don’t understand why this was even posted. Christ Himself said the poor will be with us always. So then is it more important to attempt to temporarily alleviate the poor or give the poor the Gospel while attempting to alleviate the poor. Hutson was in no way suggesting to end alms-giving.

Brady, I think it is more of his tone and poor showmanship that really puts people off, you know, screaming “look here”and climbing on the pews. It’s purely for show, like a pep rally and how flippantly he uses God’s Word.
I believe if a pastor has to scream, he has no substance in his sermon.

While i am not advocating the tone and apparant attitude with which this message was preached, and i am certainly not interested in screaming, i hope you are not saying that anyone who is passionate about the message lacks substance. Passion would also certainly motivate at times an elivated tone. We certainly expect that and approve of it concerning other things we might get excited about yet for some reason getting excited about a message or a particular truth is not appropriate. Let’s not accuse fundamentalists of being illogical and then spout something like this out as though it makes perfect sense. If the problem is that there are those that take an illogical or irrashional or unreasonable or even unbiblical stand then let us be fair in meeting out that judgment and then stand as a testimony of that same rashional, reasonable, logical and biblical approach to serving God that seems to be lacking in so many out there today…by the way that stuff is not found only in the camp of the fundamentalist…

To me “In my name” doesn’t mean “while telling people about the Gospel”, it means “for my sake”. Because we love Him, and He loves them.
Something I read recently talked about the idea of ‘the poor will be with you always’ – that it doesn’t mean that we should cease to focus on the poor because they’re just inevitable, but that it’s an instruction of a sort: the poor should always be with us. As in their physical location. As in, we should be like Jesus was, giving love to those who are unloved, and literally being among the poor. Our home, our focus, should be with the poor. And so, the poor should be with us.

All those people there who need, like all of us, to hear the Word. All those people who may think that they are hearing it. All the time spent yelling and accusing and jumping around – that could have been spent rightly dividing the word of truth.

When I go to church, I want to hear from God. I want someone to open the Bible and take me through a passage verse by verse, compare it with other passages, and explain to me what it means.

(And didn’t his mother ever tell him that chairs (pews) are meant for his derriere, not his feet?)

This is what I think of as “let me tell you a thing or two” preaching, although,I do realize that it does become more than just a thing or two. It leaves the people thinking and talking about what the preacher says, more than what the Bible says. It feeds the self-importance of the speaker rather than revealing the compassion of the Savior. These preachers are so wrapped up in setting everyone else straight, that they don’t even realize how little Bible that they actually preach.

Usually, in their eyes, separation from the world trumps true compassion for the physical needs of the world.

I am Sam. Sam I am.
Would you could you grow your locks?
I would not could not grow my locks.
Does that seem odd
It’s not to God

Would your… could your wife wear pants?
She would not, could not ever wear pants.
Not in the cold not in the snow
Not one square inch of leg to show

Would you, could you listen to rock?
I would not could not listen to rock.
I will not listen, for God they mock
Not U2? Not Bob Dylan?
No sir! For the saved they’re killin’
Not U2 …or U3 or U4! They surely will never see Heaven’s door.

And Bob Dylan is hellbound too
For we know Jesus will not save a Jew

Will you protest social ills?
Like Aids or Breast cancer that surely kills.
I will not walk to help those folks!
Those homah-seckhulls and their silly jokes

And Gawd would never curse their breasts
If they’d keep ’em covered in a dress!

I cannot believe the hatred that is directed at me. I guess I am not welcome here and I will leave you to your games. I tried to warn you to leave this cesspool of mockery.

II Chronicles 36:15,16 KJV
And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:
But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.

Again, if any of you still have a conscience that has not been hardened you should heed the Bible. I am not important and what I say is not important. But remember:

Galatians 6:7 KJV
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

God has had compassion on you. He allowed many of you to grow up in a good Bible-preaching church and home. However, you have decided to come here and mock and misuse the man of God. Don’t be deceived! You may get away with it for a while but you may be sure that you will reap the consequences! Turn before it is too late!

Doug, if you think for a moment that the leeifts in the crowd will allow any of the conservatives to speak uninterrupted, then you are sadly mistaken.In a match between those who are civil and those who aren’t, the sad truth is the bottom denominator will always win out. We can not compete in a forum like this because we will not sink to the same denigration they do.

You base your entire point on the premise that Hutson and those like him are messengers of God. I, and many ex-fundies believe this to be a false premise…end of discussion…so yes, take your own advice, and go away…

There is an extremely small number of Southern Baptist churches who have their pastor in a Geneva robe. The number is even smaller than it used to be, because those churches tended to have very wealthy and highly educated congregations (i.e., liberal). I think an example would be First Baptist Charleston, South Carolina **IF** they still do it.

They are so rare that it is almost inconceivable that anyone would believe they are the norm for Southern Baptist churches.

Some of those Baptist churches with “highly educated congregations” have left the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years as the SBC has become increasingly hardline and increasingly politicized. I know this has been happening here in Texas, and I assume it is a nationwide occurrence.

It is. I know it’s worse in Texas, which has 2 state conventions, than in some other states. But Texas is not the only one that has 2 state conventions, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was formed in direct response to the SBC’s hardline stance. Churches that leave the SBC often join the CBF, particularly in the Bible Belt. I myself am in Arizona, which has a state convention which isn’t too hardline, so we haven’t seen hardly any of the stuff here, (fortunately) but I have certainly read about it!

I would like to apologize to everyone for my bad behavior. It was very rude of me to come in here and bust up the snicker-fest by telling the truth. I should have realized that liberals, Bible-deniers and skeptics would not be interested in hearing the truth.
I apologize for trying to do my job as a Christian and warn you off the path of destruction. You are obviously not going to listen and I should have realized that.

Luke 9:5 KJV
And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.

I am literally shaking the dust off the bottoms of my shoes as I type this. You have been warned.

We could lay the same charge at your feet – that you are not interested in hearing the truth because several people, though not all, have shared Bible verses on this thread which you ignore by labeling everyone “Bible-deniers.” When you do so, you are not speaking truth, as many of us here treasure God’s Word and trust it explicitly. For many of us, it was reading the Bible that led us to reject the false man-centered preaching that goes on in many fundamentalist Baptist churches.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col. 3:12) — this is what I want to see modeled in a preacher, not someone who screams.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If our priest started jumping on the furniture and pretending to Jazzercise and shaming a poor teenaged kid from the pulpit and screaming “Look at ME! Eyes on ME!” –then we’d consider that he was either flying on an illegal drug or suffering from a psychotic break, or possibly some form of brain damage. I’ve had only one experience with preaching like this, and in fact the person was tripping on cocaine!

He isn’t teaching anybody anything. He isn’t feeding any sheep. He’s just ranting and clowning around.

Oh, wait, two experiences. The shouty guy they had that one year at Baptist Bible camp was something special. He scared all the kids. Not scared them away from Hellfire, just scared them that he was crazy. Especially when he started speaking in tongues (without explaining what was going on, so it was just him rolling his eyes and flapping his arms and going blabhooolwhlathhhtoootyhhhhh) and then grabbed that one girl’s sprained ankle and hollered for a while.

The one who was at least coherently preaching was preaching in a public school, by the way. In health class. About the mechanism of addiction. As a topper, he declared that there could be no healing unless people were “prostate” (his word) before God, spread his arms out like Christ on the cross, and toppled forward without any effort to catch himself before his nose hit the carpet. And he kept on preaching.

Fell into these posts, You are degrading, judging, and spewing outright hatred , and even naming preachers, what is righteous and just about that? I take it then since you claim to be Biblicists ,you are without sin since you are casting stones, if they be not of God leave them alone but if they be of God there is nothing you can do to stop them, again you righteous biblicists ought to know where that comes from! By the way I think that’s a beam in your eye!

You sound like my former fundy CEO, even in the picking of a King Jimmie moniker.

Plus, elevating preachers so-called because they’ve proclaimed themselves to be mennagawd doesn’t mean they cannot and shouldn’t be called out for their arrogance and bullying. Where does it say anywhere in holy writ that these men are “above their fellows?” See what I did there? I threw you a King Jimmie bone so you would understand.

Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. You come into our ballpark and don’t bother to learn who our players are, or where they come from, or how many years of ball they’ve played, or the reason they’re here in the first place. You “admonish” all of us that we’re playing wrong, that in fact, the game is all wrong. And when we push back, you flounce off with your drawers in a twist. Oh, and you condemn us as you go. Does that about cover it?

Okaaay, we’re Bible-deniers and skeptics who aren’t interested in hearing the Truth because we don’t see it the way you do. As far as calling us liberals, well, that’s only a fundy-bad word, and the Bible says nothing against that! News flash: People who don’t see the Truth like you do might not be a Bible-denier or a skeptic, and might actually know the Bible better and love Christ more than you do! Also, a person who is what a fundy might consider a “liberal” might also know the Bible better and love Christ more than you. You haven’t cornered the market on God, Christ, Salvation, or Truth!

Skip the false appearance of apology; by making your self-righteousness apparent in the body of the apology, you made it no apology in either English or Classical sense.
That passage in Luke is one of the most specific of all Gospel passages, clearly meant for just the one missionary journey of the Apostles to the cities and towns of Israel. Attempting to make it apply to this situation may make you feel important, of course.

1] I’m not aware of having addressed you or your preacher spitefully. So kindly refrain from using me as an excuse to exit a melee you know you can’t win.

2] God alone is Lord of the conscience, and he he has set it free from the doctrines and commandments of men so that to obey them for conscience’ sake is to betray that true liberty which Christ has won for us.

Saint Paul told the Galatians that false brethren came in secretly to spy out our liberty in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

I think that it is fair to say that in the apostle’s example, we did not yield in subjection for even one hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain. [Ga 2:4-5]

Sir you are stinking up this place with your self righteous posts-or in liberal terms your B.S. The joke here is you think you are a prophet or somehow like the disciples in shaking the dust off “your shoes”. Again you abuse the text-kind of like your man of God does. Sammy-Christ was saying if those in the cities would not hear the gospel i.e. reject the offer of relationship with God then move on to those who would believe. Jesus is my only hope! He is what I put all my faith and hope in to make me righteous before the Father. For you to come on here and say we are not believers because we have rejected your methods (50’s culture) as offensive. Clowns like you and your ilk are the contentious brothers that Paul tells us to mark and turn from. Therefore you have been marked but please repent and turn from your self-righteous! I do not hate you sir but I hate the crap that comes from your mouth! I hate the bondage that you and your ilk try to put people into! Christ has set us free-free from works, free from rejection, free from judgement. You are not Jesus and no one here has to give an account to you or your man of God. The man of God is a lie that the ifb continues so that people can be controlled.

Believers have one High Priest and that is Jesus all other “men of God” pointed to Him. I reject your man of God theology; a pastor is only a shepherd yet you make him out to be a Jesus like figure. SIr I have called you an asshole because that is what you are-you spread your stink everywhere your go. Jesus tells us to have the sweet smell of the gospel and you have the smell of death and bondage. I do not need a lecture about my choice of language so please save it. Again I pray you repent of your asshole ways and trust the true Christ that brings freedom.

Earlier you implied that even a cursive reading of Scripture would show my political philosophy to be unbiblical. For that reason, I feel confident that you can easily rebut my witness to the social component as expounded in Scripture. Think of this as a chance to show that your school of thought produces students more capable in handling the word.
___________________________________

Dear Sam Baker:

God exists as an eternal society of three persons in ageless, unbroken communion. Have you considered that the Biblical teaching of the Blessed Holy Trinity might entail a social component?

God made all humanity in his own image. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Yahweh so covenanted with Abraham and his descendants that all males were marked with a sign including them in that same, promised relationship into perpetuity. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Yahweh gave the Sabbath and the year of Jubilee which prevented permanent alienation from the land, extremes of poverty and wealth, and provided rest for all living in the land. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

The great, OT salvation event equivalent to the cross in the NT, is the liberation of God’s people from Egypt. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Israel’s legal code required compassionate expression and civil attitudes toward all, and especially the weak and needy [women, children, the sick and aged, aliens, etc.]. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Many Psalms connect mercy, justice righteousness, loving-kindness and truth, and employ these themes in Israel’s liturgy. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Israel’s prophets railed against societal and economic injustice, and cited these things as the ground of judgment and expulsion from the land. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Jesus’ Lu 4:18-19 Manifesto is based on the year of year of Jubilee, and it functions as the interpretive core of Luke’s record. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Revelation is a kingdom of God critique/manifesto of Rome’s political blasphemy and economic extortion supported by military hegemony and apostate religion. Revelation also points to God’s alternative vision of the celestial city that comes down from Glory and [in some way that I certainly don’t grasp] causes heaven and earth to become one. Have you considered that this might entail a social component?

Introduced at creation, the social component is revisited at the consummation. It is woven in Israel’s worship, and it is attached to the covenant and the sign, the Sabbath, the Exodus, the civil code, the Psalms and prophetic preaching of Isaiah, Amos, Micah and others. It also defines the core of Jesus’ preaching in Luke’s record, and it has a significant role in casting the Revelation. Moreover, that social component is analogous of the nature of the Trinitarian life.

If you expect me to abandon this Biblical witness, you should come prepared to offer a massive weight of crushing exegesis, marked by clean, incisive, dissecting, penetrating, exacting, luminescent analysis at every point. If you’re not up to it, print my text and send it to our friend Mr. Hutson. Let him take a stab at it. Then you can post his reply for us.

I know you can cite Paul saying that a man who refuses to work can refuse to eat. But Karl Marx said the same thing. So that might not be the clean break from socialism that you’re seeking. Moreover for every such text you produce, I can post multiple texts condemning greed.

We know that fundamentalism has herds of great preachers who proclaim fearlessly the whole council of God. I’m sure you can find many who do such work as I describe in preparation for Sunday’s message every week. I don’t ask for a herd.

I am a Poe. I only try to interact as a Poe with people who seem to be able to take a joke. You seem to be one of those people.

Anyway, my true feelings hew quite close to what you have posted here. I am not quite ready to identify myself with the dreaded S word but I do feel that socialism has a lot to teach Christians. I am saddened that Christians are scared away from it for no good reason at all.

Proverbs 22:16
He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.

I don’t normally read the KJV but I do admit that I am fond of the majestic language.

First, I haven’t the slightest idea what is meant by a ‘Poe.’ What comes to mind when I see it is Edgar Allen Poe, and I am no Edgar Allen Poe. I can play various roles, including devil’s advocate [that comes natural to me]; but this doesn’t seem to fit the context. Help me out here, Sam.

Second, I couldn’t have guessed your socialist sympathies, so if your remark intended humor, it was lost on me. After your earlier remark, you ignored my weightier posts which for me at least confirmed an ‘at face value’ reading of your earlier reply. You seem to register all over the board, Sam Baker. Are you sure you’re a Christian fundamentalist?

Third: Socialism isn’t a perfect system, and intelligent socialists don’t claim that it is. But if one is a socialist, why not be honest about who we are and what we’re about? Fundamentally speaking, showing the strength of our convictions is the right thing to do. No one accuses me of harboring a secret agenda, and some are thankful for my openness.

Fourth: Even though this site serves to poke fun at some things, rest assured that you can also find gravity on this site. Some people come here with broken hearts and want to share their stories. Some come with victories and want to share their stories. The fun side is certainly present, but that does not preclude graver discourse as injured people work through questions and issues. That needs to be respected.

In conclusion, I will renew my invitation for you to continue participating in the forum. As another inferred, you should take the time to get to know us. And if you are in an ecclesiastical situation where puffery, abusive rhetoric, unbiblical piety, malignant narcissism and/or other patterns of behavior exist, you should know that there are options for you. Remember, we are not only a people of jest. Sometimes we need the humor because we are serious – about our stories, our faith, and our witness to Christ in the world.